My legal team (Handy, wearing his half moon glasses that he peers over to read his papers because it gives him an air of being erudite) has advised me to remind you of the Muck FM disclaimer which you can read here: http://muckfm.com/muck-fm-disclaimer Please pay particular attention to the part which states blog entries are fictional, despite the fact they may be based on true events. You decide where reality starts and ends (my daily struggle) and don’t bother suing my ass for libel cos I’ll be safely tucked away somewhere in Panama. With that in mind, let’s begin…

I’m not one for conspiracy theories, but the more I think about the Palace, the more curious I’m becoming. The club was virtually empty again last night, and several things just don’t seem to add up in my eyes. The club was bought recently, and reopened under a different name, but no one has bothered to change the huge sign at the front which still bears it’s former incarnation. Unlike all of the other bars in town the club has no one promoting it in any way, and Aldy seems totally unconcerned and unmoved to do anything about it.

The only customers other than ourselves in the club for most of last night were a group of older, flashy locals who for all the world looked like Essex gangsters. The men were well dressed, cautious and confident, and women brassy, sleek and sure of themselves. The older of the two men appeared to be either the owner, or someone else to be respected and deferred to. If he was indeed the owner then he too appeared completely unconcerned about the lack of customers and stood quietly at the bar watching as the ladies danced together and took turns to partner the younger man. It was all very reminiscent of the film The Business, but instead of an 80s soundtrack we were accompanied by two middle aged men playing African lounge music. The keyboard player resembled the lead singer of the Fine Young Cannibals (maybe it actually was, having fallen on hard times and forced to scratch a living on the Algarve cabaret circuit) and played a relentless bossanova beat alongside a balding, bearded man who delivered a throaty sax in mournful tones. They looked as if they had been plucked straight from the script of a comedy sketch show, and as my (shamefully libelous) imagination runs riot, in my mind they’re gay lovers who struggle to make ends meet playing to empty dives, and who spend their free evenings in their small Algarvian villa practising duets and squabbling over petty musical points, such as whether a second refrain in a lounge tune is simply indulgent and vulgar, or in fact retro, knowing and post modern? …and “why didn’t you put more stress on that C minor in the second bar? For God’s sake Nuno, Mother was right, you’re lazy, unsuitable and tone deaf!”

So anyway… why would anyone buy a club and then neglect it completely? How can they stay open without customers and remain apparently unconcerned? Maybe the season hasn’t started yet? The resort is very quiet it’s true. In my imagination it seems clear to me that there are two possibilities at play here. The first is a money laundering operation, or front for some type of criminal activity.

If we assume that this is indeed the case here (they say you should never assume, but let’s in this instance just for curiosity’s sake) then it’s quite easy to twist totally unrelated events into a growing paranoia that you’re playing out a real life plot from a Hollywood thriller. Read on…

A young couple turned up to the club later on last night, the girl stunningly beautiful. She was dark, very slim, with brooding eyes and dark curls that fell over a feline face. She was dressed in a tight mini dress that was very slutty, and you could tell she knew it. From the moment she came in I couldn’t take my eyes off her. Her beauty was captivating, and her manner confident and deliberate. You could say it was almost professional, and it wouldn’t have surprised me in the least if that was indeed true in the euphemistic sense of the word, because she was assured and comfortable throughout. She knew how to dance too, effortlessly gyrating as the bossanova rolled into the small hours, flashing bright smiles in my direction as her glance caught my helplessly captivated eyes.

Much to our amusement (and my delight) it only went and transpired that the young lady in question was a Romanian, a compatriot of Mrs Muck, leading to a happy and unexpected introduction. They quickly fell into conversation in their mother tongue and she went on to tell Mrs Muck that the man she was with wasn’t her boyfriend ( although she claims to have one) which just added to her mystery. She danced freely and unselfconsciously with other men throughout the night while her date stood watching patiently at the bar.

In my conspiracy theory/film plot/deepening paranoia it is far too coincidental to just happen to bump into a beautiful compatriot of Mrs Muck here, and it’s obviously a set up. The beautiful Romanian assassin (the girl, not Mrs Muck, although I wouldn’t be surprised) is sent to befriend the doomed couple who knew too much about the dodgy club, before seducing them and returning to their apartment with them for a night of rampant lovemaking. But instead of young Doctor Muck’s wildest dreams being fulfilled (at long last) it in fact turned out to be a cold blooded execution, with a bullet between the eyes for both of our heroes, their knowledge of the murky Algarve underworld clinically rubbed out by the beautiful killer, and the Palace free to continue it’s dastardly deception. Their naked bodies would be found by the maid the next morning, a look of terrible disappointment at not getting a threesome after all still etched into poor Doctor Muck’s staring eyes.

The other, less worrying possibility is that this is a club doing so badly that it is in fact comedy gold. So, in conclusion, I’ve decided that I’m either going to pen the script to a Hollywood blockbuster, a thriller where an innocent English DJ on holiday looking for a set somewhere stumbles across a terrible secret concealed behind the facade of a nightclub; or a sitcom called The Palace, about a failing nightclub that never attracts any customers and has a camp and charismatic manager who’s a bit deluded about the club being a success. Add incapable barmaids, a bickering bossanova playing gay couple, dangerous femme fatales and the “Manuel” figure- an innocent and bewildered English DJ who tries and fails to make sense of all the crazy foreigners, and I reckon I’ve got a hit on my hands! It’ll be like a cross between Fawlty Towers and ‘Allo ‘Allo. I’ve got Scul lined up to play the manager after his Oscar winning performance in the Muck Clippers advert (still available on Muck FM’s YouTube channel) was met with worldwide acclaim. I am pleased to say that he’s broken off from rehearsals in the lead role of our remake of Weekend At Bernie’s to read for this part. I’m pretty sure the role of a camp, middle aged man shouldn’t be too much of a challenge for him…

In all this excitement and speculation I nearly forgot to tell you that I am playing a set at the Palace on Friday night! The DJ, whose name turned out to be Luis was there again, and we had a good chat together. He’s around my age, with a similar DJing history, and due to having had an English girlfriend back in the 90s speaks our language perfectly. He travelled around Britain in a Volkwagen camper and has been to Brighton, which he loved, not least as he’s a fan of big beat. He’s a top guy all round, mucky material for sure, and when I asked him later on if there was anywhere in town I could try and get a set, he immediately offered to let me play alongside him next weekend. He went and spoke not to Aldy, but to a young guy that Aldy had said was his deputy (which was intriguing) and returned to tell me to come down on Friday night with my tunes! I know that I’ll most probably be playing to an empty club (which no doubt is one of the reasons Luis is pleased to have someone else to play rather than slog it out alone for four hours) but I don’t care- at the very least I’ll be playing again on a club system (for the first time in about ten years) and I’ve made a new friend, who loves house music and is good company. The Muck FM tentacles reach far and wide across the globe, and are always stretching further, but you knew that already. I guess it really doesn’t matter what I play if the club’s empty (although if Danny Dyer and his boss are there a bad set may end with me getting whacked) but I plan to play some progressive breaks and dreamy trance with a smattering of old skool house. The Queen has told me to give them some donk from the outset, but softly softly catchee monkey- I’ll lull them into a false sense of security, then blow their heads off on Saturday night. Providing the same thing hasn’t already happened to me that is.

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